


The Secret

by Setcheti



Series: Tremors: the Subtext [18]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise, Tremors: The Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An encounter with a new mutation brings Malcolm's secret to light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret

Larry really, really wanted to lay down on the rock he was sitting on, but he knew that if he did it was going to hurt. The rock had been fully exposed to the sun all day, and it was hot enough that it was even burning him a little through his jeans.

He was very, very glad that he’d taken Malcolm’s advice and switched to sturdy denim jeans instead of light cotton shorts for patrolling. The shorts might be cooler, but they weren’t much protection from…well, from Perfection and everything in it. And if he’d been wearing the shorts today, he’d have had burns on his butt from sitting on the hot rock when he went home tonight. Well, _if_ he went home tonight.

Larry glanced over at Malcolm. Malcolm was just sitting there, sunglasses reflecting the expanse of desert that was spread out all around them, rifle resting across his folded legs. Waiting. And doing it very, very well.

They’d stumbled across another mutation, or rather, a patch of them. He and Malcolm had been on patrol, checking out a report of some injured steers, when they’d spotted what looked like something floundering in the dirt and had gone to check it out…and had ended up scrambling up the nearest rock while lots of things that looked sort of like crabs snapped and jumped all around them.

The jeans had kept the claws and barbed tails of the crab-things at bay too; Larry thought he might never wear shorts again. He and Malcolm had gone all the way around the rock, testing the ground around it, and had determined that the colony of mutations was spread out in such a way that they would have actually had to run away from the Jeep in order to escape from the crab-things. Which of course would not have been a good idea this far into El Blanco’s territory, not to mention that it was obviously the crab-things which had injured the steers in the first place. Which also meant that this colony probably wasn’t the only one, although hopefully it was the biggest. 

Malcolm had already radioed Burt and Tyler and informed them of the situation, so now all he and Larry had to do was watch and wait. In the sun, on the hot rock, surrounded by hidden hordes of snapping crab-things with barbed scorpion-like tails. The things seemed to burrow through the loose soil much like a Graboid would, so there was no telling how many there were. In fact, they hadn’t even been able to get a really good look at one; the larger ones he and Malcolm had shot had quickly been dragged back under by their fellow mutations. Probably to be eaten, in Malcolm’s opinion, which would explain why they hadn’t seen any signs of this particular mutation’s existence before. In any other situation Larry would have thought the idea of cannibalistic man-eating crab-things with scorpion tails was neat, like something out of a bad movie…but since they had him trapped on a hot rock in the hot sun his new-mutation-finding enthusiasm had pretty much been baked out of him.

He’d never been trapped by any of the Valley’s mutations before. It was kind of exciting…but not necessarily a good kind of exciting. Not to mention, sitting on the hot rock in the sun was boring. He looked over at Malcolm again, needing some renewed reassurance but not wanting to come out and _say_ he needed it. “Are we having fun yet?” he asked instead. 

One corner of the older man’s mouth quirked up. “I’ve had fun, and this isn’t it,” he replied, then stood up and stretched. A pebble trickled down the side of the rock, making a patch of the ground below boil momentarily as the crab-things reacted, and Malcolm made a face. “Well, so much for the idea that they might forget we’re here,” he said, and then proceeded to walk all the way around the rock again and kick pebbles and sand off in every direction. 

Larry followed him, watching, and saw what he was doing almost at once. “Hey, they weren’t over there a little while ago!”

“No, they weren’t; the colony appears to be spreading. But there’s no way to tell if it’s due to our presence here or if they’re simply doing what comes naturally.” With a sigh, Malcolm pulled out his portable radio and called Burt again. “Answer the bloody radio, we have more information, over,” he snapped out.

Burt came on immediately. “ _Gummer here, what’s your situation? Over._ ”

“The bloody things are spreading out,” was Malcolm’s reply. “And I saw one doing something that looked like it was testing to see how hot our rocky refuge was. I don’t want to find out if these creatures can climb, over.”

“ _Copy that, we’re on our way. Over._ ”

Malcolm sighed and re-holstered the radio, then went back to the spot he’d been sitting in and resumed staring out over the surrounding terrain. Larry sat down again as well. “Testing…?”

“It was very quick, and I could have been mistaken,” Malcolm told him. “When I stood up, I saw one of them half out of the sand near the edge of the rock. It looked as though it might have been _feeling_ the rock, seeing if it was climbable. I’ve seen spiders do something similar before venturing out onto a new surface.”

Larry had seen spiders do that too, and the idea didn’t reassure him. “So you think the only reason these crab-things aren’t all over our rock…is because it’s too hot?”

“Let’s hope I’m wrong,” Malcolm replied. “I’d much prefer it if they were purely ground-dwelling creatures.” He chuckled. “Although I’d like it even better if they weren’t dwelling anywhere at all.”

“Yeah.” Larry flicked a pebble with his fingernail, watched the sand briefly bubble where it landed. Then he winced. “I probably shouldn’t have done that, huh?”

“I don’t see why not,” the older man reassured him with a shrug. He scooped up a few pebbles of his own and threw them; a two-foot patch of sand boiled crazily. “Anything that draws their attention away from this rock can’t help but be a good thing.”

“Yeah.” Larry pitched a few more pebbles and part of a stick – everything that was still in reach – out as far as he could. And then he was wishing he could be bored again instead of trying not to wonder if the mutations could climb, or if any of them were silently sneaking up over the far side of the rock. He looked quickly over his shoulder, half expecting to see spindly crab-legs reaching up onto the rough surface. Nothing was there. He peered as far as he could over the nearest edge and didn’t see anything there either. Now, though, his nerves were jumping. His attention went back to Malcolm. “Are we going to…you know, make it out of this?”

“Yes.” Malcom said it very matter-of-factly, as though there was no doubt in his mind; there was, but he realized that the younger man needed reassurance. “You heard Burt; he and Tyler are on their way. And once they’ve picked us up off this rock, we can determine the best method for wiping whatever these bloody things are right out of existence.” He smiled. “You’ll still be around for your birthday next month, never fear.” 

Larry nodded, feeling a little bit better. He’d really been looking forward to his birthday, because Nancy had said she was making him his very own sidekick figure to go with Burt and Tyler’s. And in spite of Malcolm’s reassurance, any thought that didn’t involve the rock and the crab-things was a welcome distraction. “Your birthday was in June, right?”

“Yes, it was not long after I arrived in Perfection.” Nancy and Jodi had made a great fuss about having missed the opportunity to spoil him, in fact. Malcolm pitched another pebble. Trip would have wholeheartedly approved of the fuss, and most likely joined in on it just to bedevil him; his birthday had always been very important to Trip. “It was June 18th.” 

Larry rubbed the back of his head, chasing an itchy drop of sweat that was creeping under the band of his hat. “What year were you born?”

“2119,” the older man answered absently, his thoughts still on his long-gone lover. It was his companion’s gasp of surprise that made Malcolm realize what he’d just said – and who he’d said it to. Anyone else would have assumed that he’d misspoken, that he’d been thinking of something else and given an unrelated answer to the simple question. But this was Larry…

…Who was currently giving him a very wide-eyed look. “You’re from the future?” he squeaked. “Really? Does anyone else know?”

Malcolm didn’t quite flinch. “Yes, I am from the future,” he replied. “Burt and Tyler know the general details of how I ended up here, just not that part of it. I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell them the truth without getting packed off to the nearest lunatic asylum – or simply thrown out of town.” He made a face. “I’m not sure which would be worse.”

The younger man considered that, then nodded his understanding of the sentiment. “I don’t think Burt would think you were crazy,” he said. “He trusts you. So if you say something to him, he’ll believe it.” Larry thought again. “But I won’t say anything, if you decide not to tell him yet.” When Malcolm raised an eyebrow, Larry shrugged. “I trust you too. If it was a…a _bad_ secret, I don’t think you’d be keeping it from Burt and Tyler. I think you would have taken off before it could catch up with you, so they wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.”

This time it was Malcolm’s grey eyes that went wide with surprise, and then he blinked and nodded. “If I’d thought I’d be followed, I would have kept moving, yes. But no one will be coming after me. My captain stranded me here by way of a sort of temporal portal. Even if someone did think to question whatever lie he makes up about my disappearance, they wouldn’t know how to find me or where to even begin to look. The portal isn’t our technology,” he explained. “Captain Archer got it from a time traveler who was posing as a member of the crew, and I doubt that even he knows more than the most rudimentary details about how to operate the bloody thing.”

Larry took that in with barely a blink. “Captain of what?” he wanted to know.

“Of Earth’s first starship, the _Enterprise_ ,” Malcolm answered, and had to smile, because it did feel good to finally say it out loud to someone. It had been an honor to be chosen to serve aboard _Enterprise_ , disapproving father and lunatic unfit captain notwithstanding. “I served aboard her for three and a half years.”

The younger man was delighted by this, and it showed. “So you’ve been to other planets? You’ve met aliens?”

Malcolm nodded. “Yes and yes – but I didn’t have to leave Earth to meet people from other planets. We had diplomatic relations with a handful of non-Terran races before we went exploring, and some of those worked with Starfleet. Our ship’s physician was from a planet called Denobula, and the first officer was from Vulcan.”

Larry was enraptured, even though he didn’t recognize the name of either planet. “So someday we’ll make friends with people on other planets?”

“Yes, we will.” Malcolm didn’t want to discuss the unfriendly aliens Earth was going to encounter right now—especially not the Xindi, and most especially not with Larry. “Our bit of this quadrant of the galaxy isn’t as densely populated as some other sectors, but we’re nowhere near alone among the stars.”

“I knew it. I knew it!” Larry sobered again quickly, though. “Kind of sucks not to be able to tell anyone, though. Probably for you too, huh?”

The older man sighed. “You have no idea. I’m constantly having to be on my guard so that I don’t slip and reveal something I shouldn’t, the way I just did a moment ago. There are so many things…” He broke off suddenly, his attention caught again by the patch of ground he’d been watching earlier; it was moving again, and the ripples looked to be spreading out. Malcolm quickly got to his feet, pulling Larry up with him and moving them both farther away from the edge of the rock. “Do you see that?”

Larry squinted, then nodded and swallowed, all of his exuberance disappearing again. “It…they’re moving this way, aren’t they?”

“I’m afraid so, yes. It appears I may have been wrong about drawing their attention anywhere being a good thing.” The ground was beginning to look like the surface of a restless ocean, ripples spreading out, swirling into bubbles and eddies that joined with slow-rolling waves – all headed in the general direction of the rock they were standing on. Malcolm activated his radio again. “Burt, what’s your ETA? Over.”

The radio crackled. “ _I can see the Jeep. We’re maybe five miles away, over._ ”

Malcolm did not take his eyes off the seething mass encroaching on the base of the rock to look for the dust cloud that would herald an approaching vehicle; he didn’t dare. “Is Tyler driving? Over.”

“ _Affirmative. Why? Over._ ”

Claws clattered against stone. “Tell him not to get out of the truck when you arrive at our location. The ground is absolutely alive with these creatures and they’re spreading out quickly; one stumble and he’d be done for.” He paused. “You might want to remain in the truck as well. If those claws can crack through their own shells, then leather and denim may not prove much protection after all. It is possible that Larry and I simply surprised them earlier, or that the heat of the day makes them reticent to venture above ground. Over.”

Static silence. Then, “ _I’ll take that under advisement. Anything else? Over._ ”

One of the creatures pulled itself to the top of the rock and looked around with independently-moving black cone-mounted eyes similar to a chameleon’s. Its shell and claws were crablike, even down to the dusky orange-and-white coloring, but it had two sets of claws in the front and a thick, swinging scorpion’s tail waving in the air behind it. The tail, Malcolm noticed, was triple-forked at the end and sported three glistening black stings instead of one. The entire creature was about the size of a dinner plate. One black cone eye followed the movement of Malcolm’s hand as he raised the radio back to his mouth. “Yes. They can apparently climb. Hurry.”

He lowered the radio, hooking it back onto his belt, then palmed his sidearm and shot the watching crab-creature off the rock. “You forgot to say ‘Over’,” Larry informed him.

“Because it’s not,” was Malcolm’s reply. He was watching the edge of the rock, where more noise from scrabbling claws could be heard. “Don’t fire unless they come at us en masse, we should try to conserve our ammunition; perhaps we’ll be able to use your gun to clear a path to Burt’s truck. Until that point, I can pick off the advance scouts one at a time.”

“Okay.” Larry started watching a spot just a few feet to the right of the one Malcolm was watching, a spot where the noise seemed louder. Something occurred to him. “Can I name them?”

One corner of the older man’s mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Crabions?”

Larry bounced in place, the tiniest bit of his new-mutation-finding enthusiasm returning. “Great minds think alike!”

“That they do,” Malcolm agreed, and took aim at another crabion that was pulling itself over the side of the rock. He angled his shot, and managed to take out a second creature which had been coming up beside the first. Motion and dust caught his eye, but more orange and white legs were reaching up into view and he didn’t dare look anywhere else. “Larry, is that…”

“It’s Burt!” Larry almost jumped up and down – and then he almost screamed when Malcolm’s next bullet took out a crabion in mid-air not two feet in front of him. “They can jump?!”

“Bloody hell! Fire at the ground, right there!”

Larry didn’t hesitate; he aimed downward and sprayed the ground with bullets in the direction the older man had indicated. Burt’s truck was roaring toward them from that side as well, and Burt himself was half-standing in the passenger seat, something small and dark and round held aloft. The truck swung broadside to the rock, and the round thing hurtled down toward the ground very close to the rock just as the survivalist yelled out, “Duck!”

Malcolm fired off one last shot and then yanked Larry down with him, turning away from the concussion grenade that was about to go off…and bringing them both practically face to face with a crabion that had been creeping up behind them. It was too close to shoot, so Malcolm lashed out with his right arm, the gun in his hand striking the creature’s shell with a sharp crack reminiscent of heavy plastic breaking. The momentum behind the blow swept the crabion to the other side of the rock, where it impacted several more of its kind that were also approaching and bowled them over the side.

That was when the grenade went off, throwing dirt and rock and flailing crabions up into the air. Malcolm was ready, using the hold he already had on Larry’s arm to drag the younger man back to his feet and off the side of the rock, jumping over the grenade-crater and bolting for the truck over ground that had been churned into treacherous softness. A few crabions snapped at their feet and legs as they leapt for the sides of the truck, one even managing to jump a foot into the air as Malcolm hauled himself over the side. And then the truck was roaring away again, leaving the crabions and the rock in its dust. 

Burt twisted around in his seat to look at the two men. “Both of you all right?”

Larry nodded and gave Burt a thumbs-up, too much out of breath to answer. Malcolm hauled himself upright and patted the younger man’s shoulder, but before he could give an affirmative answer of his own he noticed the stinging sensation coming from his arm and his leg…and the fact that he was starting to feel rather strange. “Burt,” he asked slowly, shaking his head. “Does the lab keep a supply of antivenin for scorpion stings?”

“Dammit,” Burt swore, and Tyler stepped on the gas; luckily, they were already heading in the right direction. “How many times?”

“I don’t know.” Malcolm started fumbling off his long-sleeved cotton overshirt, trying to uncover the source of the stinging pain; he barely noticed when Larry started helping him. What he did notice was that he was feeling rather detached from everything, a fact he dutifully reported in the direction of the front seat.

Tyler shot Burt a look. “Bad scorpion stings are supposed to make you feel twitchy and panicky.”

“I know.” Burt’s jaw set. “Malcolm?”

“I knew that too,” Malcolm answered. He was looking down at two purpling red welts which were rapidly swelling together just above his elbow; when he pulled up the leg of his jeans, he found a nearly identical welt decorating the back of his calf. “Just like I know a normal sting isn’t supposed to swell up like this.”

“You’ve been stung before?” Tyler wanted to know.

“Yes.” Malcolm slumped back against the truck’s bed liner with a sigh, uncaring of how hot the hard black plastic was through the thin material of his t-shirt. “My father was stationed in Malaysia for a time when I was a boy; the place is thick with insect life. So not only have I been stung by a scorpion on more than one occasion, I also know what it’s supposed to feel like and that I’m not allergic to them.” He distractedly watched the sparse streaks of cloud flow by overhead. “The antivenom may not be much help, now that I think about it. Obviously crabions aren’t the same as scorpions, despite the similarities in the tail.”

“You might be right, but there’s all different kinds of scorpions.” Tyler decided to try to keep his friend talking. “Your dad was in the military?”

“Royal Navy.” Malcolm chuckled without humor. “He wanted me to follow in his footsteps; demanded it, in fact.” He lapsed into silence for a moment, thinking about his long-gone, highly-disapproving father, then shook the memory off and turned his head so he could meet Burt’s concerned eyes. “I’m not losing it, honestly, I’m just feeling a bit disconnected – and some of that could be from the heat.”

“Possibly.” Burt didn’t look like he believed it, though. “But why don’t you just keep talking anyway.”

“I suppose that would be a good idea.” Malcolm shifted around a little, making himself more comfortable and trying to ignore the stinging pain. “Have any of you ever been to Malaysia? It’s a beautiful place…” 

He blinked just as Burt was shaking his head no…and was startled when the world around him changed with a wrench. The truck suddenly wasn’t moving anymore, and both Burt and Tyler were in the back with he and Larry. He was also lying down instead of sitting up. “What…”

“Malcolm, you had a seizure.” Burt was using his very calm and in-control voice, most likely for Larry’s sake as much as Malcolm’s own. “How do you feel now?”

“Fine. Still a bit detached, but fine.” Malcolm made to sit back up and the older man allowed it, watching him carefully. “I don’t remember a thing. There was no warning at all.”

“Not for us, either.” Tyler and Burt exchanged a look, and then Burt climbed into the driver’s seat and gunned the truck into motion again while Tyler settled against the spare tire, stretching out his bad leg with a grimace and the casual explanation, “I’ll stay back here with Larry just in case we get surprised again.”

“Hopefully we won’t,” was Malcolm’s reply, but he thought that hope was probably unlikely at best. In fact, the idea was creeping into his mind that, despite his earlier optimism, he might not make it out of this situation. He glanced over at Larry, and saw that the younger man was wide-eyed in a way that wasn’t good. Hmm, Larry. Larry knew Malcolm’s secret, or at least a small part of it…and if Malcolm died, Larry would be left holding that secret for the rest of his life, unable to prove it, doubtless unable to forget it or simply just let it go either. Malcolm found that he didn’t like the idea of doing that to Larry, who was his friend and protégé and whose boundless enthusiasm sometimes reminded Malcolm of the way Travis – and even Trip – had been before the war. Malcolm pushed himself up a little straighter, holding Larry’s eyes for a long moment before switching his gaze to Tyler. “Larry managed to drag a secret out of me while we were waiting for the two of you to get your asses in gear,” he said without preamble. “I’d been thinking that maybe it was time to share a bit more about myself with the three of you, I just hadn’t been sure of the best way to go about it. But perhaps I’ve been overthinking things; Trip used to tell me I worried too much about possible consequences that might never come to pass. I’m thinking now that maybe I should just tell you everything straight out and hope for the best.”

Tyler looked startled. “Um, Malcolm…are you sure you want to do that? Now?”

Malcolm shrugged, wincing when the movement pulled at the swollen welts on his arm; the one on his leg felt hot and tight. “If I don’t do it now and we don’t find an antidote, I may not get to do it at all – and then I leave poor Larry here holding the bag, so to speak. What kind of a friend would I be to do something like that?”

“I don’t mind...” Larry began, but Malcolm cut him off.

“I do. And I won’t take the chance.” Malcolm shifted, making a futile attempt to get comfortable. “We were passing the time with idle conversation when Larry asked me what year I was born, and without thinking, I told him: 2119. Captain Archer decided I was of more use to him dead than alive in 2154, just a few weeks before we’d have celebrated Trip’s fortieth birthday.” He snorted, remembering – and being vaguely thankful that the detachment he was feeling kept the memory from hurting as much as it usually did. “We’d have been back to Earth and been able to have some shore leave by then. I was planning to take him to Greece.”

“Greece…is nice, or so I’ve heard.” Tyler had gone from startled to shocked. “I bet Trip would have liked that.”

Malcolm smiled. “He was looking forward to it. So was I.” He glanced back at the stiff-backed man driving and then returned his attention to the wide-eyed Tyler, the smile turning a little wry. “You both think I’m delirious or something like it, but I assure you, I’m not. I _was_ stranded here by my lunatic of a captain while on a mission, exactly as I told you when I arrived here; he just happened to be captain of a starship and the mission sent me into Earth’s past. And as Captain Archer is the only person who knows when he sent me and how he did it – and he’s bloody well insane – no one else has a hope in hell of ever finding me.”

Tyler appeared to think about that. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So you’re…from over a hundred years in the future. And your ship was a starship.”

“The _Enterprise_ ,” Malcolm told him. “I was her armory officer and later chief of security as well. Trip was her chief engineer.”

“That would explain your gun,” Burt observed noncommittally from the front seat. “You designed bigger weapons than that?”

“The ones mounted on the ship herself.” Malcolm chuckled. “The phase pistol I brought along is just a small version; the large one could take out Perfection, if not the whole valley.” Tyler whistled, and Malcolm smiled dreamily. “One of the torpedoes would take out a lot more than that. I didn’t get to use those _nearly_ often enough.”

Burt chuckled, Tyler and Larry laughed…and Malcolm blinked.

This time, the world didn’t change. It just stopped. 

 

Tyler had radioed ahead to the lab, and when the truck pulled up in a cloud of dust and sprayed gravel, Cletus was waiting for them at the door. The old scientist looked grim as Burt and Larry carefully lifted Malcolm’s limp, twitching body out of the back of the truck and headed into the small building. “I set up the gurney, put him there,” he ordered. “Has he come out of it again?”

“No,” Burt said, easing his burden down on the collapsible gurney that had most recently been used for Tyler after the incident with the mutated pollen. “There are three stings that we know of, two on his right arm and one on his right calf.”

“I’d feel a lot better about giving him the antivenom if I knew exactly what made the stings,” Cletus said, gently prodding at the two welts on Malcolm’s arm with gloved fingers. “I don’t suppose you happened to grab one of these ‘crabion’ things, did you?”

“We didn’t, but the truck did,” Tyler said, limping into the lab with a bundled lump of something wrapped in a scrap of plastic trash bag cradled gingerly in his leather-gloved hands. “Knew I hit more than one of the damned things, they were jumpin’ up in front of the truck like popcorn going off.” He spread out the plastic on a nearby lab table, revealing an assortment of mangled pieces, and fished out part of an orange and white tail. “Looks like a scorpion to me.”

“Looks can be deceiving out here.” But the scientist shook his head and started drawing up yellowish liquid into a needle from a tiny bottle. “I’m going to give him a small dose of the antivenom anyway, just in case it really is what it looks like. It shouldn’t hurt him, and some of the symptoms you described could be consistent with a bark scorpion sting.” 

Burt cocked an eyebrow. “Delirium couldn’t.”

“He wasn’t delirious,” Larry corrected immediately, but noticeably without his usual enthusiasm. “He told you, I’d asked him what year he was born, and he was distracted and he wasn’t thinking about it, so he told me the truth. He’s from over a hundred years in the future.”

“Yes, he is,” Cletus interrupted when Tyler started to say something about being affected by the heat. The scientist winked at Larry. “I’m glad it was you who made him trip up, he probably would have lied to anyone else,” he told the surprised younger man. “What year did he say it was?”

Larry sat down heavily on a stool near the gurney. “2119.” 

“Hmm, my estimate was off by at least fifty years.” Cletus started poking around in the pile of assorted crabion remains with a long pair of forceps, separating some parts into different small piles and lifting others up for a closer look. “Does look rather crablike, doesn’t it? But the shell isn’t anywhere near the right consistency…”

Burt finally found his voice again. “So you already knew that Malcolm is some kind of…astronaut from the future? How is that possible?”

“No idea. We’ll have to ask him.” Cletus spared him a glance from where he was carefully transferring some crabion gore onto a slide. “I’d wondered if you boys knew or not. Let me guess, when he first got here he told you his story with just the parts about space-and-time travel left out.”

“That’s what he told me he did,” came from Larry. The younger man did not quite look at Burt. “He said he’d been trying to figure out how to tell you and Tyler – well, the three of us – but he was afraid you’d think he was nuts.”

“It _sounds_ nuts,” Tyler said, trying to get comfortable in Casey’s desk chair that he’d dragged over from the other side of the room. “But Malcolm’s not. And especially considering that he carries a ray gun around with him…”

“We know he’s not crazy,” Burt concluded. He shook his head, found a half-smile for Larry. “I agree with Cletus; if Malcolm had to slip in front of someone, I’m glad it was you.”

“Thanks.” This time Larry did meet his eyes. “He was afraid you’d kick him out of Perfection if he told you and you didn’t believe him.” 

“Possibly,” Burt answered honestly. “But he would have understood why if I had.”

“It’s too dangerous around here for someone who’s not firing on all cylinders,” Tyler elaborated. “But we do trust Malcolm, Larry. If he’d told us, we’d have given him a chance to prove it.”

“I told him that, too.” Larry glanced over at his mentor, his friend, and then looked away again, down at his boots. The boots Malcolm had insisted he wear for patrolling instead of tennis shoes, because they were safer; Larry looked at the floor instead. “If you’d been a few minutes later, we’d have been dead. We’d been throwing rocks at the crabions, trying to distract them away from us, and it made them mad.”

“I don’t think so,” came from Cletus, although he didn’t lift his head from the microscope he was now hunched over. “I think they’re mostly insectoid, possibly even arachnoid; drawing their attention away from your position could have worked.”

“It was worth a shot, anyway.” Tyler shrugged, wincing a little when his shoulder protested. “And we _did_ get to you in time, that’s the part you’ve got to remember.”

“That, and the fact that the two of you were doing a damn fine job clearing your own path off that rock when we showed up,” Burt added. “Although I’m thinking that from now on everyone should carry a grenade or two when they go outside of town. We’ll have to do some more weapons training, and soon.”

“We may need to do more than some,” Tyler corrected. “We’ve got everyone spreading their shots out at a wide-angle, because of the cyobactyls, but smaller things like crabions that can move fast, that calls for better aim.”

“They can jump, too,” Larry reminded him, not quite managing to hold back a shudder. “One of them jumped almost four feet straight up off the side of the rock, and Malcolm shot it out of the air.”

“I saw that,” Burt said, nodding. “For a minute, I thought that meant they could fly. Which would have meant we were _all_ up shit creek without a paddle.” He sighed. “Luckily, that wasn’t the case.”

“You can say that again,” Tyler agreed, shaking his head. “That’s all we need around here is some _other_ carnivorous monster that can fly.”

“I’d say the one we do have is more than enough,” came from Cletus, who still hadn’t looked up from his microscope. “Hmm, I wonder if this thing’s got some sand flea in it someplace, those little bastards can really jump…son of a bitch!” The sudden outburst startled the other three men, but Cletus didn’t notice; he abandoned his microscope for one of the lab’s special coolers, rummaged for a minute while swearing under his breath, and then stomped over to the gurney and tied the rubber band he’d used earlier back around Malcolm’s arm to make the vein come up. “It’s not entirely a scorpion, that’s just the tail and part of the sting,” he declared, drawing up clear serum from the tiny labeled bottle as he explained. “There’s a little bit of lizard in there, too, but those claws didn’t come from a crab and there’s no real spider in it either. It’s mostly a damned solifuge. In the ones that have venom it’s supposedly more anesthetic than poison, which would explain why he’s having seizures that are knocking him out. Anesthetics and normal brain activity tend to be mutually exclusive.”

“So what does that mean?” Burt wanted to know.

“It means our little spaceman isn’t going to die, and I can make the seizures stop; the _Centruroides sculpturatus_ antivenom I gave him should take care of the rest of it,” was the scientist’s answer. He injected a good amount of serum into the vein that was waiting for him, then capped the needle and set it aside, holding a cotton ball over the injection site as he undid the constricting rubber band with his other hand. He glanced up at Burt, then over to Larry. “So what else did he tell you?”

Larry shrugged. “He answered all the questions I asked – or at least, he was answering them all until the crabions started swarming and climbing up the rock.”

“He started talkin’ again after the first seizure,” Tyler picked up. “Said he didn’t want to leave Larry holding onto a secret like that all by himself.”

“I used to work with a fellow whose pet project was documenting fossil ages by tracking minute variations in certain parts of the DNA ladder,” Cletus offered in exchange. “When I ran Malcolm’s stats for the lab files, I spotted markers I recognized as pointing to what looked like around 200 years in advance of us.” It was his turn to shrug. “I wasn’t sure what to do once I’d confirmed it. I knew you boys wouldn’t have lied about him being Tyler’s cousin without a good reason, so I wasn’t sure whether you knew or not.”

“I could tell he wasn’t lying about the part of the story he did tell us,” Burt said. “And now that I think about it, pretty much the only thing he _didn’t_ tell us was that he was from the future and exactly what kind of ship he’d served on.”

“We’ve got the same last name, is he some kind of relation to me?” Tyler wanted to know.

“No, the two of you have next to no alleles in common – your DNA doesn’t even match enough for the two of you to be related by marriage,” the scientist simplified with a quick grin, disposing of his used needle and cotton ball in one of the lab’s hazardous waste receptacles. “Kind of like these crabions looking like a crab, it must just be a coincidence.”

“So what is a solifuge, anyway?” Burt asked, changing the subject. “A scorpion, some other kind of bug, what? And do we have them here in the valley?”

“They’re related to pseudoscorpions, and yes, this being the desert we probably have more than a few of them running around.” Cletus pulled up a nearby stool and sat down on it. “You’d probably know them as camel spiders, although they aren’t really a spider. They live underground and they move fast, so you could go a long time without ever seeing one clearly enough to know what it was. Not to mention that normally they’re only a few inches long and the majority of them aren’t venomous. The bad news, however, is that they do tend to be carnivorous.”

Burt sank onto a stool of his own. “Shit.”

“You can say that again,” Tyler agreed. “Mal said they were spreading out…”

“They were,” Larry confirmed. “The only reason we stayed on the rock in the first place was because they were between us and the Jeep, and we didn’t know how many of them there were. By the time Malcolm called you again, they had us completely surrounded.”

“So they can dig pretty fast when they want to,” Burt mused. “They can sense prey, probably the same way El Blanco does, by the vibrations. They can climb like a spider, and they can jump pretty high as well.”

“And they anesthetize their prey…which means they eat it alive, right?” Larry asked in a small voice.

“Most solifuges don’t have venom, anesthetic or otherwise. But yes, if they can get hold of something they’ll cut it up and eat the pieces,” Cletus confirmed. “With this mutation, I’d say that would probably apply to anything that wandered into their colony and couldn’t get out fast enough.”

“Which would explain the injured cattle,” Burt said, nodding. “It would take a hell of a lot to bring down one of those steers, more than it would take to bring down a human. The cattle must have wandered in close to the edge of the colony – or rather, a colony. We don’t know how many there might be.”

“We’re gonna have to find out,” was Tyler’s reply. “Doc, how fast do these bugs usually multiply?”

Cletus shrugged. “For a solifuge it can be as much as a couple of months between generations. But until I’ve got some more specimens to examine that _aren’t_ in pieces, I couldn’t even begin to guess at how the crabions reproduce.”

Burt thought about it for a moment. “I don’t want to assume anything either, but I think that if these things had been spreading out for any appreciable length of time we’d have had more reports of injured cattle and sheep, possibly even some attacks on humans.” 

“Which means that if what Malcolm and Larry found was the only colony, we might still have a chance to isolate it and wipe it out,” Tyler said. He made a face, shifting uncomfortably in Casey’s chair. “Well, you and Larry do, anyway. Harlow can go with you, and I’ll stay here with Malcolm and Cletus.”

Burt hesitated, then nodded curtly. He’d been about to suggest that Tyler could drive…but if anything happened to their vehicle, or if the crabions surrounded them, it wasn’t going to be any place for someone who still had limited mobility. He clapped a hand on his lover’s good shoulder and didn’t quite sigh. “Right. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. Before anyone goes back out there, we need to figure out the best way to kill the damned things.”

“And I’ll need to figure out if we have enough antivenom to go around, just in case,” Cletus added. “And for that, we’ll have to wait and see how well it works on Malcolm. If I have to give him another dose, then nobody’s going to be heading back out there until we get more sent in.”

“No, we don’t want to take chances,” Burt agreed. “And speaking of chances…” He got back up and went to the station’s phone, dialing back to town. “Jodi? It’s Burt…yes, we got them, but Malcolm was stung so we’re at the research station…yes, Cletus is here…hang on, let me put you on speaker.” He fussed with the phone, and the speaker crackled. “There, can you hear me?”

“ _Stung by what?_ ” Nancy’s voice demanded. “ _Is he all right?_ ”

“He will be,” Cletus answered. “He was stung by a crabion.”

Dead silence. Then Jodi’s voice asked, “ _Who let Larry name the monster?_ ”

“Malcolm thought of it at the same time I did.” Larry still sounded subdued. 

“ _Where exactly are these things?_ ” That was Nancy again. “ _Are they close to town?_ ”

“No, they’re miles away – they look like a crab with a scorpion’s tail attached, and they seem to live mostly underground. As long as everyone stays in town, I think we’re all safe for the time being,” Burt told her. “But Jodi, I need you to radio out to everyone in the vicinity of sector A-14 that they shouldn’t go anywhere on foot or horseback until further notice.”

“ _Can do, Burt,_ ” came from Jodi, and they heard her move away from the phone and start fussing with the radio. Nancy cleared her throat. “ _So these things are…poisonous?_ ”

“Venomous,” Cletus corrected. “They use the scorpion tail to sting with. And it looks like heavy denim isn’t enough of a barrier to prevent a sting, although if you’re moving fast enough it should stop their claws.”

“ _Claws…like a crab_?”

“Yep. Two sets.”

More silence, then, “ _Well, maybe we can eat them._ ”

They were all still laughing when a sleepy-sounding British voice from behind them complained, “Is…something funny?”

Larry almost tipped over his stool, but he recovered himself quickly and at least part of the smile that had been missing came back. “Nancy wants to know if we can eat the crabions.”

Malcolm opened his eyes, his forehead furrowing as he considered that. “Hmmm…well, I suppose that since they _look_ like a crab…”

“They aren’t crabs, and what they’re made of so far isn’t anything you’d want to eat,” Cletus informed him. “Malcolm, how do you feel?”

“Wrung out, and I have a splitting headache,” the other man admitted without hesitation. “I take it that since I’m awake, and alive, that means you had an appropriate antidote on hand.”

“Two, actually.” The older man smiled at him. “One for a bark scorpion and one for a solifuge seems to have done the trick.”

“A solifuge?” Malcolm’s eyes widened. “Bloody hell, I thought that was just an urban legend.” He saw Larry’s questioning look and found a smile. “Soldiers fighting in the desert have claimed for generations that ‘wind spiders’ would take chunks out of them during the night, using anesthetic venom to keep their victim from feeling that they were being eaten.”

Larry looked properly horrified. “They eat people alive in the desert while they’re _asleep_?!”

Malcolm chuckled. “No, not that I know of. The ones I’d seen in insect collections were on the small side, anywhere from a few inches to not quite as long as my hand.” He yawned. “Sorry. So how are we going to get rid of them?”

“You’re not getting rid of anything except some blood samples,” Cletus informed him, although he was still smiling. “But you can help the rest of us figure out how to get rid of them.”

Malcolm thought again, and yawned again; this time he covered the yawn with his left hand. “I would have suggested that we try using some of Burt’s old ‘thumpers’ to confine them temporarily until we can figure something more permanent out, but after what happened when Larry and I tried to distract them I’m not sure it wouldn’t simply make them swarm and spread out more. Perhaps…perhaps we need to capture some of them for study first. If they are more insect than not, some sort of poison may work.”

“But I would definitely need live specimens for that,” Cletus said. “We don’t dare start spraying chemicals all over that colony until we know for certain that it’ll do what we want it to and not something…unexpected.”

“ _Yeah, like say, making the crabions bigger or something_ ,” came out of the speaker. “ _Um, Nancy just left the store, and from the things she was muttering under her breath I don’t think it will bee too long before she shows up at the lab to check on everyone. And I’m going to start calling the people I can’t get on the radio to tell them about the crabions, so I’ll be hanging up on you now._ ”

“We’ll use the radio if we find out anything else,” Tyler told her, shaking his head as he turned off the speaker when she disconnected. “Well, it looks like we’ve got incoming.” 

Burt rolled his eyes. “Malcolm, is there anything else you need to tell us about… _when_ you’re from before she gets here?” he wanted to know. “Anything that can’t wait?”

Malcolm eyes widened, but he shook his head. “No. As I’ve said before, no one will be coming after me – and as Larry correctly intuited earlier, if I’d thought someone would be I wouldn’t have stayed here.” He hesitated. “So you do believe me, then?”

“We know you’re not nuts, Malcolm,” Tyler informed him. “We did think it might be the crabion venom and the heat talking, but then ol’ Cletus here backed your story up.”

“Your DNA has evolutionary markers that point to the future,” Cletus explained. “Very minor differences from modern DNA, and only something a few people on the planet would assign any significance to, if they noticed at all. So you don’t have to worry about anyone else finding out the way I did.”

“But since we have a mutation problem to solve _and_ we’re about to have company,” Burt said, “you’ll have to tell us about the future another time.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Malcolm fought off another yawn. He blinked at Larry, frowned. “Are you all right?”

Larry started to say he was…and then stopped and shook his head. “I thought you were going to die.”

Malcolm understood. “It’s all a bit too real now, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. “Not a bloody great adventure anymore where the good guys always win, even though today we did.” When Larry nodded, Malcolm reached out and grasped his arm. “I understand,” he said. “Believe me, I understand all too well.”

Larry blinked at him. “You do?”

“I do.” Malcolm smiled at him a bit sadly. “I’ll tell you about it another time. Because Burt’s right, our first priority at the moment is to blow our newest mutation problem straight to hell.”

“I think blowing them up would just make them mad, or make them scatter,” Larry observed with a tiny smile of his own. “It’s too bad they aren’t really crabs; if they were, we could trap them the way people do in Maine and places like that.” 

Malcolm blinked at him, then pushed himself up on his elbows with a wince so that he could see Burt and Tyler, who were equally dumbstruck. Larry looked back and forth between the three of them in confusion. “What?” 

Cletus chuckled. “You may have just solved the crabion-catching problem, that’s what,” he said. “And once we can catch them…”

“We can find out how to kill them,” Tyler finished, grinning. “Good thinking, Larry.”

“It’s an excellent idea,” Burt agreed. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to get hold of the plans for constructing a lobster pot. Although I think we should make our trap with the idea that crabions’ claws could be stronger than your average lobster’s…”

 

Malcolm was about to fall asleep again – mostly from boredom, because his head was still aching too badly for him to get up and help with the other men’s search for lobster-trapping information via Roger’s computer – when Burt left Tyler and Larry and reclaimed a stool by the gurney. The survivalist looked down at Malcolm with a thoughtful frown and asked quietly, “There was a war, wasn’t there?”

Malcolm sighed. “An alien race called the Xindi attacked Earth.”

“Did we win?”

“Yes.” But Malcolm shook his head. “At least, we won in the sense that Earth was saved and the Xindi were stopped. But the onset of the war destroyed what was left of Captain Archer’s sanity, so not all of the horrors we all faced after that were perpetrated by the enemy, if you get my meaning.” He sighed again. “When the Enterprise first left Earth to go exploring, so many of the crew were young, idealistic adventurers…very much like Larry. There was very little of that to be found in them at the war’s end.”

“I’d imagine not,” the survivalist agreed. “My grandfather fought in World War II, he told me stories – not war stories, just stories about the people he went over there with. He said that war either destroys a man or makes him.” He clapped a hand – gently – on Malcolm’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you got here the way you did, Malcolm, we all are…but I think that Tyler is really lucky to have a cousin like you.” He stood up again, reclaiming some of his briskness. “Get some sleep. If we need you, I promise I’ll let you know.”

Malcolm nodded, unable to speak past the lump that had risen in his throat, and obediently shut his eyes. In spite of the threat posed by the crabions, his own recent brush with death and the issues he knew that both had raised for his protégé, he was feeling better. Mainly because he knew that Burt wouldn’t lie to him. 


End file.
